Sage Christie's song "Moss in Your Name" caps off their album ice olation, an album about and written during the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic. It is a touching reflection on those we lost, and I frequently find myself tearing up when listening, no matter how many times I've heard it.
The whole album points out to me that I've seen very little art about the pandemic. I'm sure it's out there, but it hasn't crossed my bow.
The good news is that it's fermenting happily! After a week, the swing-top bottles are making a hearty pop each day when I burp them. I'll probably give them a few days longer to really dry out. They're not quite as tasty right now as I'd like—bubbly, but not terribly fruity, and mostly taste like sweet. Fingers crossed that as they get drier, the tart flavors of the fruit will pop a little more.
My ginger bug is also doing remarkably well, which is confusing to me because I really don't quite know how to read it yet.
I'm feeding it ginger and sugar every day or two, stirring vigorously, and occasionally adding a bit more tap water, and it seems... happy? It's still quite lively after what must have been at least a couple months. I was sure I was going to kill this one too, but somehow it's still alive.
My brain wants to know, with rigorous precision, how this thing is working and what I'm doing right, but I think I'm at a stage in my relationship with this culture where that type of clarity isn't available to me yet. Perhaps I need to sit in the mystery a little longer and let the intuition develop.
The carbonation today was vigorous enough to blow the lids back when I burped the bottles, so I think these are done.
And yeah, with a little more time, they're quite nice. The flavor is still somewhat subtle, but it's gently tart and fruity, with excellent fizz and a beautiful color.
This is the form that the United States Department of the Interior is using to collect feedback about "any signs or other information that are negative about either past or living Americans" in national parks.
As a second-grader, I despised recess. Not because I enjoyed class — it was boring and tedious, hemmed in by schedules and busywork — but rather because I was lonely. Some people don’t unders…
OpenAI is featuring a "Looksmaxxing GPT" that provides "PSL ratings" for photos. It will rate people as "subhuman", and advise men to get invasive procedures like jaw surgery to "increase their sexual market value" among women, who it describes as "hypergamous by nature".
"PSL" is short for "PUAhate Sluthate Lookism", a group of three manosphere/incel communities. PUAHate came to public attention after Elliot Rodger's 2014 mass shooting in Isla Vista, California, when it came out that he frequented the platform to talk about his "incel" status.
After uploading a photo, this GPT gives ratings like "Subhuman", "Low Normie / High Subhuman Borderline (White)", or "high-tier normie, borderline Chadlite".
It proactively offers to provide "hardmaxxing" (medical interventions like plastic surgery) or "softmaxxing" advice (grooming, fitness training, etc).
Friends! Tell me about indie #TTRPG hidden gems. I've been watching a lot of Quinns Quest and Cozy RPG Reviews, as well as reading the design thoughts of Jay Dragon, and I just want to gobble up a bunch of excellent, innovative games.
So I haven't watched much of QQ or any of the other stuff you linked, but a quick glance tells me you prolly already know about Starforged, which is on my list to recommend to people. I've only played a handful of sessions (solo), but I keep returning to it when I have time.
Depending on where you've spent time in TTRPG circles Apocalypse World may or may not be considered a gem that is hidden. But I recommend it anyway, especially for folks who like a story and have only played more mainstream stuff like Pathfinder, GURPS, or FATE.
My absolute favorite to point people to, though, is Swords without Master by @Epidiah. worldswithoutmaster.com/swords…. It uses dice in a very novel way compared to most games most people have played and the character sheet is also unlike anything most folks have played. The reincorporation mechanic is surprisingly deft at making meaning out of a session. It's perfect for zero-prep one-shots, but a 4-6 session arc I played with some folks is, to this day, the most emotionally satisfying experience I've had at the table.
These are more like "required reading" than "hidden gems":
- Lady Blackbird - Primetime Adventures - My Life With Master - Cortex Prime - Fiasco - Sorcerer - Blades in the Dark - Wushu: the Ancient Art of Action Roleplaying - Index Card RPG - Burning Wheel - Mechanical Oryx - 3:16 Carnage Among the Stars - Belly of the Beast - Anima Prime - The Spire - Trophy - Legacy: Life Among the Ruins - Monsters & Magic - Ars Magica - Amber Diceless Roleplaying
Interesting! I recognize some of these, like Blades in the Dark, Fiasco, and The Spire, but not all. Mind sharing what you love about a couple of them?
Many advance the “technology” of RPGs, solving common problems that show up at the table, in a new way.
Many contain mechanical procedures for GMs, instead of vague advice on the “art” of running a game.
Some are examples of “coherency”, where the game has an opinion of what it is trying to do, and is laser focused on making that happen at the table, removing everything that doesn't do that.
One is only 200 words, but uses mechanical incentives better than any game before 2000.
Really great games are often built around encoding some key insight about how RPGs work into play. Some on this list do that.
Most games are lucky to have one such insight. One game not on my list, Apocalypse World, has at least three, which is why it took over indie gaming for a while.
We went camping over the weekend, and the night we got in, I was excited to notice this thing on the ceiling of the restroom—an infrared heater panel!
I've been curious to experience these since learning about them. They definitely make sense as energy-efficient heating for a state park restroom: heat people, not space.
Watching my 8th grader (and their peers) in the final choir and theater performances of the school year. These kids have all grown so much and are so talented. I'm really excited to get to watch some of them (including mine) learn and grow even more over the next four years in high school. It's truly a delight.
I'm in the middle of a six-week crash course to become part of my city's Community Emergency Response Team, or #CERT. CERT is a program backed by FEMA that trains civilian volunteers to be disaster responders, with basic #preparedness, search and rescue, and other relevant skills.
This has been a really fun experience, and I recommend it to anyone in the US whose local municipality offers it. Given how the federal government is currently being dismantled, if you're at all interested, I recommend taking the course sooner rather than later. Don't know if FEMA is going to exist much longer.
The organizing principle behind CERT is that civilian volunteers with a small amount of basic training can make a significant impact in disaster response when emergency services are overwhelmed. Volunteers shouldn't be doing things that require highly specialized skills to do safely, like entering heavily damaged structures or administering advanced medical care, but they can take care of minor tasks and free up emergency services to focus their efforts where they are more critical.
It takes a very community-oriented approach to preparedness. Which is just common sense, but I guess it bears pointing out in the year 2025—we are all obviously better equipped to survive large-scale catastrophes if we coordinate and work together, instead of indulging in some bullshit isolationst bunker fantasy.
Rational preparedness begins with intentionally deciding what situations you are preparing for. You cannot be perfectly prepared for everything; that way lies paranoia and anxiety, as you flood your nervous system with anticipated threats. Don't do that.
Here in the Pacific Northwest, the most severe regional disaster we can anticipate is a Cascadia megaquake. This would be a giant earthquake, likely up to a magnitude 9.0, up and down the Pacific coast, from Northern California to Vancouver Island. We are, in geologic time, due for such a quake, and it is liable to be cataclysmic.
Anyway, to avoid a long digression on Cascadia: it's gonna be bad. Especially if the federal government's emergency response apparatus has been gutted and sold for parts.
So! CERT training is a way to stem the bleeding a little, and to feel more empowered to help in case of disaster, instead of only victimized.
Something just clicked for me about the bullshit argument that generative AI is 'democratizing' art creation.
Proponents of this argument often gesture at how photography became more and more accessible—now, everyone can take a photograph. They make similar gestures to the means by which art is made*. Anyone can go to the supermarket and buy paints or colored pencils.
And I like that democratization, that increase of accessibility! I like that I don't have to curry favor with the local church if I want a message printed, since I have my very own printer.
But to place generative AI alongside those betrays a misclassification. It suggests that skill and creative spirit are materials as tangible as colored pencils or ink, and furthermore, that making a digital simulacrum of those qualities available to more people is somehow a disruption of power structures.
Which is absurd, and completely divorced from political reality. AI isn't democratizing anything, it's concentrating it. AI is supported by sprawling data centers that guzzle loc
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Something just clicked for me about the bullshit argument that generative AI is 'democratizing' art creation.
Proponents of this argument often gesture at how photography became more and more accessible—now, everyone can take a photograph. They make similar gestures to the means by which art is made*. Anyone can go to the supermarket and buy paints or colored pencils.
And I like that democratization, that increase of accessibility! I like that I don't have to curry favor with the local church if I want a message printed, since I have my very own printer.
But to place generative AI alongside those betrays a misclassification. It suggests that skill and creative spirit are materials as tangible as colored pencils or ink, and furthermore, that making a digital simulacrum of those qualities available to more people is somehow a disruption of power structures.
Which is absurd, and completely divorced from political reality. AI isn't democratizing anything, it's concentrating it. AI is supported by sprawling data centers that guzzle local water supplies, filled with racks and racks of servers that are made with increasingly scarce resources and require a constant roar of electric power. AI models are trained in part by poorly compensated workers in the Global South.
The 'revolution' that AI supposedly represents is just another example of how late-stage capitalism will package and sell the aesthetic of democratization all while concentrating actual power. It is C&H Sugar selling Che Guavera T-shirts.
This, weirdly, feels to me like a sibling to the recent news that crypto peddlers want the Trump White House to create a "strategic crypto reserve", which would, of course, serve a purpose completely contrary to what a national strategic reserve is supposed to do.
It is the aesthetic of populism, its flayed face worn like a mask by its killer.
Did somebody just, like, poach all the reflectors from the highway signs along I-5 North? Hardly any sign is legible between Portland and Olympia because they're missing so many letters.
I have these two speakers, which came in their own plastic housing. I want to use them as part of a bigger device, in a 3D-printed enclosure. However, I cannot figure out how best to secure them in place.
As you can see, at each corner of the speaker, there is what looks like a mounting hole, so I was initially thinking of driving screws through two of them into either a threaded receptacle or a captive nut. However, there is very little horizontal space (my calipers say less than 0.5mm) surrounding the hole, where the flat of a screw head might gain purchase, so I don't think this is a viable option.
What other ideas do you have for securing these speakers in place inside a 3D-printed enclosure?
Good question. I intend to orient the speakers in the same orientation as in the picture (well, same orientation as the foreground speaker), and the base plate they'll sit on is going to be printed from the ground up to accommodate other components. I'm not sure I could make horizontal posts with that little bit of overhang.
I'm really new to part design, though, so this could very well be a failure of imagination.
I think I've got something, similar to @Kernel Bob's idea: two feet, one on either side on the tab, which are thick enough to have faces coplanar with the speaker box and have the same contours as that little cutout. They'll hold a nut and bolt, which should hopefully all keep it in place.
I've started mocking it up in FreeCAD and printing prototypes. Which is exciting—this is the first time I've ever modeled and printed something all of my own design!
I previously installed the .deb version of Firefox on my #Ubuntu desktop and did my best to switch my .desktop files and move my profile, because of a bug in the snap.
Somehow, the .desktop files I deleted have returned, and running firefox, which was previously successfully launching the .deb, is back to trying to launch the snap.
Another product has entered the #HomeAssistant #VoiceAssistant ring, this one from FutureProofHomes. They advertise 4 microphones, a NeoPixel LED ring, music playback, 4 buttons (including a hardware mute), and a couple general-purpose sensors (humidity, temp, lux). The HAT can be attached to a Raspberry Pi or their Core Board, which contains an ESP32 chip.
To be honest, that's more or less my ideal feature list for a voice assistant satellite, and the form factor is great. I'd be shocked if Lewis from Everything Smart Home didn't also have his own device in the works, and of course, Nabu Casa is developing their in-house version, so between these and the ReSpeaker Lite, we're suddenly looking at 3-4 local-only voice assistant kits on the market by the end of the year.
It's an exciting time in the local #SmartHome community!
The Satellite1 PCB Dev Kit contains the two PCBs necessary to build your own completely private voice assistant and multi-sensor with XMOS advanced audio processing and music playback.
Good. I played with the ESP S3-box thing, and it just wasn’t good enough to be usable. I think it was a problem with the microphone quality. Oddly, using the tiny M5Stack Echo gave better results for me. In the end I put them all back in the “maybe this will work in the future” drawer and went back to the Google speakers to control stuff.
Iiiiinteresting. Seeed Studio, who make a pretty ubiquitous dual microphone/audio-out array called ReSpeaker, have announced a new array that can be used with an #ESP32 microcontroller. They specifically advertise it as being compatible with #HomeAssistant.
At $35, this might be a model of what an affordable local-only voice assistant box could look like. I doubt the ESP32 has enough resources to be used as a music streaming target (via something like Snapcast) at the same time, though.
Discover the new ReSpeaker Lite Series! Control your smart home with natural language, integrate with OpenAI, and activate custom wake words. Explore ReSpeaker Lite 2-Mic Array and Voice Assistant Kit for advanced voice interaction and automation.
Official hardware coming this year is confirmed! It was first reported (that I could find) by The Verge in April, and further commented on at the end of the Voice Chapter 7 livestream.
That shows that our hobby is near the top of the Maslow pyramid of needs.
First come many other important things.
Perhaps even other hobbies, if they immediately bring more joy (feeling joy or satisfaction is also more higher up than e.g. getting shelter and of food, or caring for offspring). Even sport is for many people higher in up, perhaps for it's health, endorphine release or social aspects.
I'm surprised to discover that it's not easy to find caps for tactile switches that are made of, say, polished aluminum, or some other lightweight and cheap metal.
I'm scoping out materials for a #DIY #electronics project, and I'd love to have something with a slightly nicer feel than plastic.
When I upgrade my #HomeServer next, I'm going to be moving to a Docker Compose-based system rather than the current #YunoHost system I'm running. I have some learning ahead of me, since I'll need to brush up on port forwarding and DNS, and have never used Docker or Docker Compose, but as I've thought through the questions I want to answer for myself, I've been... a little surprised at how few lingering question marks I have.
Is it really going to be as simple to get going as I think? 🤔
"A new Home Assistant voice control hardware device running Home Assistant’s local smart home voice assistant is planned for release at the end of the year."
With the Open Home Foundation and a new roadmap, smart home platform Home Assistant is positioning itself as a competitor to big tech’s grip on the smart home.
Hey community! I'm looking for a #selfhosted alternative to Google Photos for my family. I'm interested in something with an easy to use UI, automatic face tagging, multi-user support (including shared albums and, if possible, automatically sharing photos of designated faces), and a good mobile app that supports automatic syncing with device photos.
I think I've narrowed the options to #NextCloud Memories and #LibrePhotos. Does anyone have any experience with using either as a Google Photos replacement? Can you speak to how you like them, how you decided on them, or anything that might help the choice?
I'm using immich as well, but it doesn't tick all your boxes. (Sharing of faces for example AFAIK) But it's worth a try anyways. Never used the software you asked about though
give a try to #immich . It's fantastic and easy to deploy. Great replacement for Google #photos immich.app/ I'm also running #nextcloud instance, but haven't tried Memories, so I can't really compare them.
@lpryszcz I am flabbergasted at Immich tbh, the name is not great but the app is unreal, it is basically a replacement for google photos I have been looking for, I am shocked!
Hello Spencer, in the last 2 years I tried a lot of these alternatives to move from Google photos to a selfhosted software. Most of them did not match my requirements or I did not like the UI. I have Nextcloud so it was obvious to use Nextcloud photos. But this was nearly the worst experience, also because you need a separate app to get things work as needed. So I came to #Photoprism and stayed. I´m very very satisfied with it. Clear recommendation. Hope this helps you a little bit. 😉
if you were asking this question like a month ago #Immich is what I would have recommended, but now that also #Ente is selfhostable I really don't know which one better fits your case, so maybe check them out both!
I would say immich is the best google photos alternative as that’s what it’s trying to do and I think it supports all the features you listed. do be aware it’s in very active development so make sure to pin the version and check changelogs before updating
Don‘t know if you have already considered this one, but if what you are looking for is really „Google photos, but selfhosted“ then checkout Immich. I‘ve looked for years for a suitable replacement for Google Photos, and this is the only one that is really even a replacement at all.
Hot damn, I was aware of Immich, but didn't realize it was this popular! My concern with Immich right now is its warning that it's still under heavy dev and shouldn't be relied on as a daily driver.
Dang, what a Thursday surprise: Home Assistant has released an application that seamlessly integrates with the HA platform and enables music playback from multiple streaming services (including a local media library or self-hosted music server) to multiple target devices.
I strongly suspect that in the next year, we'll see the Home Assistant team announcing their own, local-only smart speaker device: something that can integrate with Home Assistant, process spoken commands (using Voice Assistant), and play back music (using Music Assistant). It seems to be what the organization has been building toward.
The beauty of the open-source community of hackers and the Open Home Foundation's values of user choice is that whether or not HA puts out such a product, once the supporting pieces are in place, it also means anyone else could work toward that end. (Indeed, some of the entries in Home Assistant's recent community voice assistant contest were voice assistant satellites. Looking at the categories in that contest, it's hard not to see it as a bit of talent scouting for future plans.)
I have my fingers crossed for the polish that a professionally produced device might bring, but I also love that the pieces are there for an enterprising hacker to share open-source circuit board schematics and 3D printer files for DIY'ing a similar device, or for a well-known community content creator to make and sell their own device to fit that niche (à la Everything Presence One).
It strikes me just how much of a contrast this is with the closed ecosystems of... well, every other tech company today. God, it's refreshing.
@Bonfire This is certainly just a minor quality-of-life thing, but does Bonfire support adding custom emoji/emoticons? If not presently, might it in the future?
create UI to add custom emoji in settings (enter a name and upload an image) include the user's+instance's emoji when in publish opts that's it 🥇 Related to #713 #150 #399
I once saw one of those helpful single-purpose webpages, in the same family as the Motherfucking Website series, explaining that when you ask for technical support, you should ask for what you want to do instead of how you think you'll do it. It probably had some catchy name or phrase.
I can't find it now, though. Anyone happen to know what I'm talking about and have a link?
I don’t know the website, but I agree with the philosophy. When I worked in support, one of our big tools was asking questions to understand what the user actually wanted.
My first wife was a reference librarian, and early on explained to me the concept of the "reference interview”, which is how they handle this problem.
Customers come in asking about Y; a significant part of the reference librarian's job is playing Q&A to tease out the X that they actually *want* to know.
Grocery chain Trader Joe’s is joining Elon Musk’s SpaceX in arguing that the US labor board, which is prosecuting cases against both companies, is unconstitutional.
Spencer
in reply to Spencer • •My ginger bug is also doing remarkably well, which is confusing to me because I really don't quite know how to read it yet.
I'm feeding it ginger and sugar every day or two, stirring vigorously, and occasionally adding a bit more tap water, and it seems... happy? It's still quite lively after what must have been at least a couple months. I was sure I was going to kill this one too, but somehow it's still alive.
Spencer
in reply to Spencer • •Spencer
in reply to Spencer • •The carbonation today was vigorous enough to blow the lids back when I burped the bottles, so I think these are done.
And yeah, with a little more time, they're quite nice. The flavor is still somewhat subtle, but it's gently tart and fruity, with excellent fizz and a beautiful color.